


THE BEST BEE FIC ON MARS

by sanguinity



Series: THE BEST BEE FIC EVER [2]
Category: Bee-Man (Comics), Double-Dare Adventures (comics), Elementary (TV)
Genre: BY WHICH I MEAN A GREAT BIG SKY ROCK!, Bees, Crack, EMPRESS OF THE BEES, GREAT BIG SKY ROCK FULL OF BEES!, Joan is, Rocks Fall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2018-04-28 04:46:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 11,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5078341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity/pseuds/sanguinity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A meteorite crashes in Prospect Park. A meteorite full of SPACE BEES.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Signs and Portents

**Author's Note:**

  * For [damnmydooah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnmydooah/gifts).



> [Because reasons](http://damnmydooah.tumblr.com/post/130261965347/vegetablerightsandpeace-avvoltoio).
> 
>  ~~Updates will happen when they happen.~~ COMPLETE, with twice-weekly updates.

The bees had been agitated all day.

In hindsight, _Euglossa watsonia’s_ disquiet was the first forewarning of the invisible threat lurking in Prospect Park. Too bad neither Joan nor Sherlock recognized the omen for what it was. 

However, let it be said in the humans' defense that _Euglossa watsonia_ had always been as sensitive and volatile as _artistes_. (Entirely understandable, given the artistry of their combs and petal-paintings!) Any little thing might send them into a tiff: an argument in the next brownstone, a traffic snarl on Flatbush, the unexpected unavailability of a preferred blossom. Sherlock and Ms. Hudson sometimes claimed the ability to interpret _watsonia’s_ moods, Sherlock drawing on his extensive experience with his own hives and Ms. Hudson on her comprehensive knowledge of ancient oracular texts. But unless there was a clear proximal cause for the bees’ upset (something that Joan would then set about solving, like the devoted beekeeper she was), Joan’s general policy was to ride out the bees moods.

That particular day -- the morning after a meteor lit up the night sky above Brooklyn, two weeks to the night after a lunar eclipse turned the moon blood-red -- Joan’s bees were inexplicably clingy and restless. She attempted to soothe them with two of their favorite treats: orange-flower water in one of their pebbled sunning-baths and caffeinated rose-syrup in one of their feeders. Uncharacteristically, they left the fragrant offerings to the sole pleasure of Sherlock’s _mellifera_ hives, dedicating their day to following Joan from room to room by the tens of thousands.

Joan accepted their clinginess with her usual grace, but the bees' behavior put Sherlock on edge, bees and man amping each other up in a mutual feedback cycle of increasing agitation. Around noon, Sherlock snappishly announced his intention to investigate the latest rumors on the Swirl-Theory boards (obvious make-work to get himself out of the brownstone) and Joan waved him on his way with a sigh of relief.

But not two minutes later, Joan followed Sherlock’s shouting to the foyer to find him and the bees in a stand-off at the brownstone door, the _watsonia_ refusing to allow Sherlock to pass. Joan finally managed to scold the bees into standing aside, and Sherlock made his escape. Joan resumed her own indoor pursuits -- there was no point in subjecting Brooklyn to her bees when they were in a mood like this -- and the bees sullenly shadowed her as she worked.

Thus, it wasn’t until Sherlock came bursting back in the door an hour later -- disheveled, wide-eyed, absent his usual coronet of guard bees -- that Joan understood that the bees' strange behavior wasn't just a capricious fit of pique, but a sign that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

 _“Sherlock!”_ Joan shouted, pushing through the agitated cloud of bees to catch him as he stumbled. He clutched tightly at her, gasping for breath as she eased him to the floor. His hands and wrists were covered with angry puncture wounds, already coming up into hard lumps. The welts continued at his collar and up into his hairline; only his face was undamaged. _“Sherlock!”_ she repeated.

He struggled to focus on her face. _“Space bees, Watson!”_ he gasped. _“Space... beeeeees...”_

Then he swooned into her arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things you needed to know: [Caffeine Makes Bees More Likely to Do the Waggle-Dance](http://entomologytoday.org/2015/10/16/caffeine-makes-bees-more-likely-to-do-the-waggle-dance/)


	2. The Bees Speak

Scenting their Empress's obvious distress, the _watsonia_ poured into the entryway. Her drone lay across her lap, unconscious, reeking of hemolymph, alarm pheromones, and venom. The pungent mix included the deaths of his guard detail -- their spilled hemolymph and their final, desperate call to defend the hive -- but most of the scent-markers on him belonged to some alien colony.

 _He was hive-robbing!_ the bees buzzed.

_Yes, but where? We know every hive in the five boroughs and Long Island, and we’ve never smelled this one before!_

_It’s wrong,_ more bees buzzed, low and anxious. _It smells of..._

 _Dread_ , the queens finished, having left their egg-laying upstairs to investigate the uproar. _Desolation_. The scent clinging to the Empress’s drone was the same as had been carried by the wind all morning. The odor stirred some half-forgotten memory among the bees, older than the species itself. A memory older than both the eyeblink-young  _watsonia_ and the ancient _mellifera_ : a memory of darkness, emptiness, and bitter, piercing cold.

 _He’s hungry,_ a small contingent bees interrupted. They were young bees, not yet promoted out of nursery duty, still hypersensitive to the minute-to-minute needs of the brood. Once it was pointed out, however, the other bees could smell it, too: the drone’s flesh was exuding the same chemicals that filled the brood cells, where voracious, larval metabolisms burned through honey, bee-bread, and royal jelly as quickly as it could be fed to them.

 _He’s more than hungry,_ other bees pronounced, _he’s starving!_ Immediately, a detachment flew away to requisition provisions for the esurient, swooning drone.

They had not been gone but minutes, however, when a wave of alarm pheromones -- _watsonia’s_ own, this time, not those of some foreign hive -- seeped around the brownstone door.

 _Incoming!_ came the call from outside the brownstone. And then a second later, more urgently: _To me, to me! In the Empress’s name!_

The bees’ buzz raised to an angry roar, and _watsonia_ poured out of the building by the tens of thousands to meet their foe.


	3. Battle for the Brownstone

Joan had too much medical training to lose her head, and she efficiently evaluated her patient. Whatever had happened to Sherlock -- and it looked like he might have tangled with a wasp or hornet nest, given his welts and the raving about “space bees” -- at least his breathing remained strong. But his heartbeat was hammering triple-time, and he burned with fever.

Joan was distantly aware of the entryway emptying of bees, the swarm draining away to somewhere. Above her head, there was a solid, startling _thump_ against the brownstone door, as if someone had thrown a basketball from the stoop. Joan could hear the buzzsaw fury of her bees on the other side of the door, along with a lower _burrrr_ , ominously like a gasoline saw running at full throttle. Clearly, her bees had detected some kind of threat outside and had gone to meet it. Whatever was happening outside, however, Joan had to trust her bees to take care of it. Her immediate priority was Sherlock himself.

The few bees that remained with her and Sherlock clustered at his mouth, and she brushed them away, wanting to keep his airway clear. To her surprise, her fingers came away sticky. _Honey_. The bees were feeding him. Hoping that they knew something she didn’t, she tracked their flight to a nearby honeycomb, and she leapt up to cut it free of its foundations. Bringing it back to where Sherlock lay, she produced a penknife, uncapped some cells, and drizzled honey into his mouth, taking care that he didn’t choke.

Shortly, Sherlock began to rouse. “ _Honey_ ,” he whispered, trying to take the comb from her. His eyes were unfocused, but his grip was strong. “ _Honig, honning, honung, hunang…_ ” he murmured to himself, trying to pluck the comb from her hands. She let him take it, and he tore into the comb with singleminded focus.

Nevertheless, his pulse continued to run dangerously high; she wanted him in a hospital, in case his reaction to the venom turned even nastier. How an ambulance crew would get through the battle on the other side of the door, Joan had no idea -- the percussive _thumps_ above her head were coming every second or two now, each one making the wood of the door shudder -- but if she needed to, she would put him over her shoulder and carry him to the next block herself.

She was just reaching for her phone when the library glass shattered.

On hands and knees, Joan scrambled around the corner to find a clump of bees the size of a beachball careening erratically around the library. The outer layer was clearly _watsonia_ , but inside the mass, half-muffled by it, Joan could hear that low, alien, menacing  _burrrr_. Getting to her feet, she wrenched a baluster from the staircase, and -- sharp end down, shouting for her bees to get clear -- she spiked the baluster two-handed down into the center of the mass.

Her blow knocked it from the air to the floor. It _thumped_ as it struck, a bloodchilling echo of whatever was still _thumping_ against the door. She pulled her stake back to stab into the writhing ball of insects again. This time, her strike caused whatever-it-was at the center to crack and crumple with a sickening _crunch_ , squirting blue-green hemolymph like a grapefruit. Sadly, most  of the bees in the ball had continued to press their attack instead of getting clear, leaving many of them smooshed between the center of the mass and the floor, but the surviving _watsonia_ immediately abandoned the dead thing in the mass and flew to defend the broken window, leaving Joan with a wreckage of god-knew-what on the end of her baluster.

She had barely hefted it to inspect it when she was interrupted by a gunshot.

The shot was outside the brownstone, not inside, thank god, but it was immediately followed by a second, and Joan hit the floor.

“Watson!” Sherlock shouted, panicked. A scrambling half-second later he was beside her, sheltering her body with his own. “ _Watson_ ,” he said urgently, tucking his head low against hers.

“I’m okay, Sherlock. I’m okay,” she reassured him, and she felt him relax marginally. The gunshots continued, and she fought not to flinch. It wasn't the barrage of automatic weapons fire, but individual shots, each preceded by a thoughtful pause. They went on and on. Multiple shooters, from the sound of it.

Sherlock knelt up above her, and she reached up to yank him back down again. “Get down,” she hissed at him.

“ _Hungry_ ,” he whined, breaking free of her grasp. A few seconds later he dropped back down beside her, a thick slice of honeycomb in his hand, newly torn away from the wall above them. He made short work of wax and honey both, neatly licking away the stickiness where it leaked over his hands.

He had improved over the last several minutes: his eyes were alert, his movements coordinated and definite. He seemed cogent, too, if unnecessarily preoccupied by honey. If it wasn’t for his pulse, which continued to race, and the unnatural heat radiating off his skin -- not to mention his ravening hunger, despite Joan’s protests, he was already kneeling up again to cut a third slice of comb from the wall -- he might have seemed entirely well.

The gunfire continued. “What the hell is going on out there?” Joan snapped.

“Someone’s helping your bees. Three someones, by the sound of it,” Sherlock said. He began unbuttoning his shirt. “It’s as hot as Hades in here.”

“Sherlock, don’t,” she scolded him. “You’re running a fever, you’ll want that in a second.”

Wrestling with him over his shirt, Joan belatedly realized it had been a good ten seconds since the last shot. “Shh,” she said, “listen, it’s stopped.”

Sherlock stopped. They both listened.

Into the silence, the front door swung open.

Bees began to flood through, swirling and angry, and then a figure in a veil and full beekeeper whites stepped inside, half-obscured by the fog of bees that enveloped it. The figure carried a pistol in one hand, and a chemical sprayer in the other. It tucked the pistol into a holster at its belt.

“Hello, Sherlock,” Jamie Moriarty said, pitching her voice to carry over the bees. “Joan. So nice to see you both.”


	4. Space Bees from Space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we achieve full cowbell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Language-escapes made fanart! [SPACE BEES](http://language-escapes.tumblr.com/post/132164249816/i-was-bored-at-work-and-said-oh-i-should-read). In both good and evil varieties, pending more information on whether they're good or evil. :-D

“On days like today,” Moriarty said, raising her voice to be heard over Joan’s bees, “I congratulate myself on my foresight to post a sentry across the street.” She unhooked a large, dark object from her waist, and flung it to the floor in front of them. It was a bee the size of a small dog.

Joan gasped, and Sherlock scrabbled backwards to put some distance between him and it.

“Fortunate that I was already in the area,” Moriarty continued, “stealing the meteorite that struck Prospect Park last night.”

“Meteorites? Not exactly your line,” Joan said.

She could barely see Moriarty’s smile through the haze of bees. “Oh, you know me, always looking for new opportunities. One must stay ahead of the competition.” She nearly had to shout to be heard over the bees, and in a sudden fit of irritation, she snarled at Joan. “Tell your bees to stand down.”

“Like _hell_ I will,” Joan bit back.

Moriarty swung the chemical sprayer up into a menacing, two-handed grip. “Oh? This is my own special blend of neonicotinoids and DDT.”

“You _fiend_ ,” Sherlock snarled, and flew at Moriarty.

Literally flew. Clumsily, slowly, but he was a clear foot off the ground. He had gotten his shirt off while Joan was distracted by Moriarty, and two pairs of transparent wings thrumming between his naked shoulder blades.

Both women stared at him. Sherlock lurched and bobbed in midair, his hands already reaching for Moriarty’s throat, even though he was still several yards away from her.

“Well, that’s new,” Moriarty said, and aimed her insecticide sprayer at Sherlock.

Joan tackled Sherlock, pulling him to the ground. “Don’t,” she hissed at him as he struggled. She tried to be careful of his wings, having no idea how fragile they might be. “Stay down,” she hissed at him.

Sherlock finally subsided, but the bees continued to harass Moriarty, looking for a way into her beekeeper’s suit.

Moriarty kept the sprayer nozzle aimed at Sherlock. “Shall we conduct an experiment?” she asked Joan. “See how my special blend affects him? It’d be a shame to damage such a unique specimen, but admittedly, he can be studied much more easily dead than alive.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Sherlock hissed. “I’m ‘the one person who understands you,’ or so you say.”

“Try me,” Moriarty shot back. Joan couldn’t see Moriarty’s face, but her voice was pure, hard menace. “Call your bees off, Joan.”

Joan couldn’t risk it, not with Sherlock ill and vulnerable after being attacked by… giant bees, apparently, like the one at her feet. She shouted for her swarm to stand down.

“Free passage for my man, too,” Moriarty prompted, and Joan scowled.

“Free passage,” she instructed her bees, “for both of them. I mean it,” she scolded them, when they whirled even harder around Moriarty, “stand _down!”_

Reluctantly, Joan’s bees subsided, the swarm coming to hover and swirl behind her. Their wingbeats resounded with their resentment.

“That’s better,” Moriarty smirked, removing her veil. Her hair tumbled into perfect, tousled curls around her shoulders. “Not very obedient, your bees, are they? See, this is why you don’t have nice things, like an international crime syndicate. _Moran!”_ she shouted.

A few moments later, Moran hulked up the steps, a high-powered rifle in his hands.

“Wotcher, Sherlock,” he nodded. “I like the wings.”

Sherlock glared at him. “Moran.”

“Good thing we were in the neighborhood,” Moran continued, undaunted. “Dozens more like that one,” he said, indicating the enormous insect on the floor. “All dead now, of course,” he added happily.

“Yes, Sherlock,” Moriarty began, “you really do have to tell me...”

She paused, as the room began to brighten around them. The air seemed to shimmer and sparkle, vibrating against Joan’s skin, and then the walls of the brownstone faded from view.

They were standing in a large, open space; the air was suddenly thin and cold in Joan’s lungs. Joan swallowed, pushing back a wave of nausea.

The four of them -- Moriarty, Moran, Sherlock, and Joan, plus also Joan’s bees and the outsized bee-corpse -- were surrounded by a circle of tall, skeletally-thin men wearing bristled mock-Roman helmets and short red capes. Joan didn’t recognize the objects they were holding, but going by the body language, she would hazard that they were weapons.

She stood to face them. Sherlock got to his feet beside her. Joan's bees swirled tightly around them both.

“Welcome to Deimos,” said a man with heavy gold epaulets on his shoulders. Antenna protruded through holes in his helmet. The arrangement didn’t look very safe to Joan: give the helmet a good yank, and it function less like a personal protective device and more like a guillotine.

Moran raised his rifle to his shoulder, but a ray immediately zapped from one of the be-caped soldiers' weapons. Moran fell to his knees with a snarl of agony, his rifle falling from nerveless fingers. He panted on his knees, his eyes promising death to the ring of Martian soldiers.

“Drop your weapons,” the epauletted man ordered, and after a moment’s face-off, Moriarty reluctantly put down her insecticide sprayer. “All of them,” he instructed, and she removed her pistol from its holster, too, placing it on the ground.

“That’s better,” the officer approved. “We will now take you to your audience with Queen Bea.”


	5. Queen Bea of Deimos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After the longest of hiatuses, this work is now complete, and will be updating twice-weekly!

Queen Bea was human in appearance, a stunning blonde with a _film noir_ sense of style, lounging in a tight red sheath dress on her six-legged throne. Only her wings and antenna broke the illusion of her humanity. She sat up in interest when the Earthlings were marched in, studying them closely.

“Finally, a goodly number…” she murmured. She sat back in sudden disgust. “But only one is envenomed. And it’ll be _ages_ until your next lunar eclipse. At this rate I’ll never enslave the Earth. _You,”_ she said, pointing to Sherlock with her sceptre, “come here. Make obeisance to your queen.”

“I already have a queen, and it isn’t some trumped-up space-vixen,” Sherlock averred, but two guards seized his elbows and dragged him forward. He resisted their manhandling with feet and wings, and for a moment he levitated clear of the ground. But the two guards easily tugged him back down again, bodily wrestling him to stand in front of the throne. Joan’s bees swirled ominously behind her, but at a gesture from her, they held their position instead of moving to his defense. 

“Oh, good, it’s a clever one, already flying,” Queen Bea approved of Sherlock, rising from her throne. “No coordination yet, of course, but that will come quickly enough.” She circled him, trailing a hand over his naked chest, tracing his shoulder tattoo with a finger. He stood stoic under her hand, until she touched his wings. Her finger grazed those delicate membranes and he instantly thrashed, attempting to twist away from her touch. In a moment, the guards had put him on his knees.

The bees threatened to rise against Sherlock’s guards, but Joan hissed at them to hold. She desperately needed information: who this woman was, and whether her plan to enslave the Earth was a real threat or only a bluff. Joan could hope that the queen’s plans were merely your standard self-absorbed villainous megalomania, unfounded in any real capability, but Queen Bea's teleportation beam and ray guns suggested that her technology was at least partially superior to Earth’s. Joan watched tensely as Sherlock protectively half-curled on himself, panting in distress. If the queen touched him like that again, Joan would go ahead loose her bees on her and play the resulting hand as it lay, but for now, she and Sherlock would do better if they could keep the woman monologuing. “Not yet,” Joan whispered to her bees, hating the need for restraint. 

The quiet instruction caught Queen Bea’s attention. She dragged her eyes away from Sherlock’s naked torso to consider Joan and her swarm. “I see that someone had the good taste to bring an offering for me! Come, sweetlings,” she crooned, crooking her finger at the swarm.

As if mesmerised, the golden cloud began to drift toward the alien queen.

“No,” Joan interrupted with the firmness that came of years spent working with boundary-pushing addicts, “the _watsonia_ are mine.” 

An eddy of indecision riffled through the swarm, and Queen Bea frowned. She crooked her finger again, and again the bees began to drift toward her.

“To _me,”_ Joan commanded her bees, and again the bees swirled in confusion.

Empress and Queen stared at each other in a silent battle of wills, while the bees milled between them, their agitation increasing. Then some indefinable tension in the room snapped, and the bees came pouring back to Joan. 

Courtiers gasped. A whisper of shocked murmurs rose from the far corners of the throne room.

Joan’s bees swirled around her, angry and confused by their near-betrayal of their Empress. _“Shhh,”_ Joan reassured them. “It’s all right, it wasn’t your fault. You’re fine, I won’t let her have you.” One after another, the bees briefly landed to taste their Empress’s skin, seeking the truth of her forgiveness. Gradually their confusion and anxiety eased, only to be replaced by a focused, restrained menace. Whatever failure of courage had overcome them when they had first entered the Queen’s presence, it had since hardened into resolution of purpose. They wanted only Joan’s command, and then they would lay waste to this pretender and her court.

Queen Bea, enrapt, watched the reunion between Joan and her bees. “Fascinating,” she pronounced. “I would expect it of _that_ one, eventually,” she said, with a careless flick of her wrist toward Sherlock, “although not so elegantly, and not with sufficient strength to challenge my control. But _you._ Not a drop of venom in you. Just a _human._ And yet you wield the power of the bees.” She came forward to circle Joan, examining her as if she was an entomological specimen. Joan held her ground. Wisely, Queen Bea didn’t try to touch her.

“There’s nothing _just_ about Watson,” Sherlock snarled, and was cuffed to silence for his trouble. Joan set her jaw, adding that to the list of things the woman would eventually pay for.

“Yes, I see that now,” Queen Bea agreed with Sherlock. “I had thought this mission a shameful waste — an entire nest of bees sacrificed for the recruitment of a single foot-soldier — but between the two of you… There’s potential here.”

“That’s what you think,” Joan promised. “I’ll never help you with your evil plan, and neither will Sherlock.”

“Perhaps. And yet you two seem very attached to each other,” Queen Bea observed. “And to your bees, as well. I’m sure we can work out some kind of… _accommodation.”_

Moriarty heaved a dramatic sigh, and every head turned to her — in the showdown between Empress and Queen, they had forgotten the other humans present. “Oh, _please,"_ Moriarty pooh-poohed. "I'm sure you can eventually bring them to heel — as you point out, those two are ridiculously attached to each other — but unless your purpose is simply to pull off their wings and watch them squirm, _so to speak—”_ She winked at Sherlock, then returned returned her attention to the alien queen. “There are far more efficient routes to world domination.”

“Don’t do this,” Joan warned. “Earth is your home, too.”

“Oh, don’t be precious,” Moriarty chided her. “The planet’s already enslaved, or hadn’t you noticed? You think international law is for _your_ benefit? At this late date, the only relevant question is who the masters will be.” She turned back to Queen Bea. “And _that’s_ something I can offer you.”

Queen Bea frowned, studying Moriarty. “I’m listening.”

“If you’re serious about enslaving the planet, you don’t want to do it one foot-soldier at a time. What you need is a powerful international syndicate, already well-connected at the very highest levels.” She removed a bee-keeping gauntlet and produced a business card. “Jamie Moriarty. Pleased to _finally_ make the acquaintance of someone else with interplanetary ambition.”

With a scream of rage and frustration, Sherlock launched himself at Moriarty, and all hell broke loose. 

Sherlock’s guards dragged him back, beating him down with the butt-ends of their weapons. Joan ran to protect Sherlock, viciously kicking out at the guards’ unprotected knees, making them stagger and turn on her instead, and Moran took advantage of the joint disruption to attack one of his own guards, expertly twisting his gun out of his hand and then incapacitating him with a ruthless elbow to the nose.

Meanwhile the bees, far beyond their last thread of patience, went for anyone and everyone who wasn’t Sherlock and Joan. Their indiscriminate attack foiled Moran’s attempt to shoot Queen Bea.

Someone set loose into the chaos what might have been a flashbang; Joan knew only that the sudden noise and light were overwhelming. However, unlike a flashbang, whatever-it-was reached all the way into the core of Joan’s body, sending an agonizing buzz of electric, grinding _wrong_ through her bones. She collapsed in blind, nerveless agony, in too much pain to writhe. She gasped for breath, fighting to make her diaphragm work properly, while something warm, dry, and particulate gently rained down on her.

_Her bees._

Whatever-it-was had knocked her bees right out of the air. Joan groaned in despair, her fingers clenching.

“Sweep all that up,” she heard Queen Bea order, her voice muffled and indistinct through the pain.

Joan tried to focus, tried to pull her limbs back under her power. For her bees’ sake, if not her own. For Sherlock’s sake. But despite her most valiant efforts, the rising muzziness refused to be held at bay. 

Then the muzziness rose up and pushed her under, into darkness.


	6. Good Morning, Sunshine

“Good morning, sunshine,” Moran said, his voice low, gravelly, and amused. “I was beginning to wonder if heroic efforts would be required.” His voice was a little distant, and -- Joan realized with a gasp of relief -- he was pitching himself to be heard over the angry hum of her bees. _Her bees were alive._ She could hear their distress in their wingbeats, nothing at all like the contented hum of a working hive, but it was a comfort to know they were simply alive. Beyond the hum, even more distant than Moran’s voice, there was an irregular, bumbling noise, like a drunk stumbling into walls. Her body hurt too much to turn and look.

“I would have tried rousing you,” Moran said conversationally, “but your bees wouldn’t let me near. And loverboy over there is useless. Gone completely off his rocker, he is.”

“Sherlock?” Joan groaned, instantly regretting the pain that spiked through her skull.

Suddenly Sherlock was there, hovering over her -- she could feel the air push against her as it supported the fan of his wings. His body shaded her from the too-bright light. “Joan,” he said, low and unhappy. “ _Joan Joan JoanJoan Jooooooaaaaaan.”_

She gritted her teeth and rolled over to look at him, peering at him through eyes that didn’t want to open. He was wild-eyed, frantic, examining her closely, then his gaze snapped away from her, his attention caught by something she couldn’t see. He zoomed away as quickly as he had arrived, spitting invective at something. 

With a groan, Joan lifted her head to look.

They were in a long, narrow, beeswax-yellow cell. The cell mouth was hexagonal, as was the entire length of the space, the overall length and diameter roughly proportional to a storage cell in a _mellifera_ comb. Sherlock bounced off a barrier at the cell’s mouth, like a moth beating against a window, promising death and destruction to whatever was on the other side. There was a dragging, exhausted quality to his movement, as if he’d been at it for a while.

“Look at him. They say he’s one of the brightest minds on the planet, and he couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery right now,” Moran said from behind her. She turned to look: he sat on the floor against the the back wall of the cell. “None of us can get through that thing. I gave it a good go, earlier. But instead of biding his time, conserving his strength for something he _can_ do…” He shrugged, then putting the issue aside, he nodded at the other side of the back wall from where he sat. “There’s water over there, if you want it.” 

There was a wide, shallow, rock-filled basin, much like what she provided her bees. Water steadily trickled in one side and out the other. She dragged herself over to it and rinsed out her mouth, then, exhausted, she set herself against the side wall and studied Sherlock. Her stomach roiled with nausea.

“Sherlock,” she called, experimentally, and again he flew to her, repeating her name. “ _Joan Joan Joan-Joan-Joan.”_ She tried to catch his hands and calm him, but in a minute he was throwing himself at the barrier again, still promising death to the indistinct shapes on the other side.

“More of those bloody great big bees on the other side of that thing,” Moran observed. “Same as the ones at your place. The feeling’s mutual, by the way. They want to kill him just as bad as he wants to kill them. Ask me, he ought to be bloody grateful he’s locked up in here. Cell’s keeping _him_ safe, not the other way around.”

“Sherlock,” she called again, and again he came to her. Again she tried to calm him, and again he ripped himself away from her, inhumanly strong, to fling himself at the barrier. She winced at the force of his impact. Sherlock simply gathered himself up and threw himself at the barrier again. 

“All you’re doing is giving him a running start at that thing. Hey, call him again. Maybe he’ll knock himself out this time, and give us some peace.”

Joan glared at him. “What are you doing going around with Moriarty, anyway? Last I heard, she’d given you an order to kill yourself. Your life or your sister’s, wasn’t it?”

He shrugged. “Things change. Keeps life interesting.”

“She wants to sell out the Earth and everyone on it,” Joan pointed out. “She’d backstab _you_ in a hot second.”

He grinned, unconcerned. “Could do. Even so, I’ll still be out of here before you lot will.”

Joan’s eyes narrowed. “What have you got on her?”

Moran gave her a knowing smile, then tipped his head back against the wall, shutting his eyes. He whistled to himself a song that Joan didn’t know, the sound slicing through Joan’s skull. 

Before she could snap at him to be quiet, Sherlock suddenly redoubled his efforts to get through the barrier at the front of the cell. “Sherlock, _please,”_ she pleaded, sick at the sound of the damage he was doing himself. She pushed herself away from the wall in an effort to go to him and quiet him. She’d sit on him, if she had to.

“That’ll be my ride,” Moran said, getting to his feet. He offered Joan a hand up. Still feeling ill, she took it. 

There was a noise at the front of the cell, and a bristle-helmeted guard stepped in. Sherlock immediately hurled himself at the new opening, but something _zapped_ and he was thrown clear. 

_“Sherlock!”_ Joan cried, and stumbled to where he had fallen. She fell to his knees beside him, checking him for injury. He seemed little more than dazed. His skin had cooled considerably since the brownstone. He was still warmer than he ought to be -- whether that was his new basal metabolism or from the effort of flying, she didn’t know -- but he was no longer fever-hot. She helped him to sit against the side wall of the cell, where the hexagonal angle -- one hundred and twenty degrees, exactly -- allowed him to half-recline, his wings tucked neatly against his back. 

Moran paused in the doorway and dug two vials out of his pocket. “You might want to try giving Bee-Boy his meds,” he said, tossing them to Joan. “One of the guards brought them by a little before you woke up, suggested they might help with his loonies.” 

Then, with a last smirk, he was gone.


	7. Both or Neither

Cursing Moran under her breath, Joan scrabbled for one of the vials. It was a little larger than a test-tube, unlabelled, and filled with a liquid both darker and more viscous than honey. She had only just cracked it open to examine its contents, when Sherlock wrenched it from her hands. He downed it before she could stop him. Then he lunged for the second.

She got to it first. “Not until we know how the first one affects you,” she told him, planting a hand on his chest to hold him back. 

She didn’t expect him to understand the statement, but he took a shuddering breath and looked at her. Looked at her _properly,_ for the first time since she had awakened. 

“Sherlock?” she asked hopefully.

He ducked his eyes away from her and resumed his seat at the wall. There, he fixed his attention on his mostly-empty vial, meticulously cleaning it of all lingering traces of liquid. 

Joan kept her eyes on him, watching for ill effects from the potion. He seemed more lucid than he had, the earlier mania gone. His hands trembled slightly. 

At length he finished cleaning the vial. Letting it drop to his side, he tilted his head back against the wall, and put an arm over his eyes. 

“Sherlock,” she tried again.

“Watson,” he acknowledged. He sounded bone-tired, defeated, and yet he was clearly himself, as he had not been before.

She breathed deeply in her relief. “It helped, then,” she ventured.

He nodded, his arm still over his eyes. “It would seem so.”

“We’ll wait before the other one, though. In case there are ill effects.”

His hand tightened on the empty vial, but his voice, when he spoke, was calm. “As you think best, Watson.”

He seemed too vulnerable to interact with more closely -- he was still keeping his face and eyes covered, hiding from her eyes. Joan pushed herself up to examine the front wall of their cell instead. Moran had said it was inescapable, but she had never trusted Moran, and that opinion had only been confirmed by his little trick with the vials. Anyone who could play with Sherlock’s lucidity like that didn’t have their best interests at heart.

“Tell me what you remember,” she instructed Sherlock, mostly to keep him talking so she could monitor his condition while her back was turned.

“Beginning from when?” he asked wearily.

“From--” she began, and cut off with a startled yelp when something slammed hard into the barrier in front of her.

“Space bee,” Sherlock said flatly, devoid of the interest she would have expected from him about such a creature. “Give thanks for that barrier, Watson. They want to kill us as badly as I wanted to kill them earlier. The meteorite was full of them.”

“Moriarty mentioned a meteorite,” she prompted. The barrier was a material she hadn’t seen before, hard, translucent, with a waxy bloom. The first few millimeters were soft, but the farther she dug into it, the harder it became. She could clearly see the marks Sherlock had left from battering himself against it, and likewise, what she assumed were the scars from Moran’s attempts to breach it. 

“In Prospect Park. The Swirl-Theory boards were full of accusations that a meteorite had landed but that the news was being actively suppressed. I thought it more of the usual twaddle, until someone posted photos of ‘city maintenance vehicles’ that were clearly federal surveillance vans. I went to investigate, of course. Someone _must_ watch the watchers, Watson. And who better than a keen and impartial observer like myself?”

“Who indeed?” Joan murmured.

“You jest, but the state of civil liberties in America is quite shocking, and while I am not a citizen, this country provided me with a place of refuge when I needed one.” He paused. “And furthermore, it was kind enough to introduce me to you.”

Startled, she stole a quick glance at him, but his face was turned away from her. The set of his jaw and shoulders screamed unhappiness. She turned her attention to the side walls, hoping that they might be more pervious to escape than the front.

“And so you return the favor by helping out the ACLU. I get it, Sherlock, I do. What were the feds surveilling?”

“They had already taken possession of the meteorite, but I saw certain unmistakable signs… A bee species, Watson, so extraordinary--” He cut off with a sudden groan.

Joan turned, expecting some new medical crisis of god-knows-what. Sherlock was doubled over his knees, grinding the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Sherlock?” she asked.

“I was unable to resist the bait, and thus you find us as we are!” he snapped.

“I don’t think anyone could have reasonably expected a trap set by a villainous alien bee-human hybrid set upon dominating the Earth. Not even you.” Hesitantly, she knelt beside him and touched his shoulder, half-expecting him to reject the comfort. To her surprise, he subtly leaned into her touch. She let herself stroke his skin with her thumb. “Although she can claim whatever she wants, I don’t believe for a second that we’re on Deimos.”

He frowned up at her, distracted against his will from his self-flagellation. “And what is Deimos supposed to be?”

“One of the moons of Mars. I don’t know much about it, but I do know it’s tiny. Most of the inner-solar-system satellites are, Luna excepted.” Sherlock pulled his hands away from his face and gaped at her, as if she was the one who had unexpectedly grown wings. “What?” she protested. “I read a lot of comic books as a kid. You know this.”

“Go on, then. Why aren’t we on Deimos?”

“Deimos’ gravity should be slight, a fraction of our moon’s. And yet we’ve been clomping around as heavy as we ever were.” Her lips twitched. “Well, I have. You’ve gotten fairly light-footed of late.”

He shook his head at her in open wonderment. “You amaze me, Watson. I never do get your limits.”

She shrugged. “We’re together and alive. As long as we have that much, we can solve the rest.” 

His eyes shone at her. He opened his mouth to respond, but his words were lost in a gasp of pain.

“Sherlock!?” 

“Forgive me, Watson,” he ground out, “but I believe I need the other vial.” 

She scrambled to uncap it for him, and he poured it down with shaking hands. She watched, hand on his shoulder again, waiting to see the potion’s effects. Gradually the tautness in his frame eased, and she breathed deeper in response. But there had only been the two vials; if it turned out that Sherlock should need a new dose every few hours--

“I’d like to check you over,” she said, shaking off the thought she could do nothing about. “Make sure you’re…” She hesitated. He was a long way from _okay._ “I won’t touch your wings.”

He grimaced. “I suspect that you’ll find that your Columbia medical degree, as excellent as it is, has very little to say about my current condition.”

“All the more reason to get data now, against whatever’s coming later.” Then, because she thought it would amuse him, “Trust me, I used to be a doctor.”

With a sigh, he leaned forward so that she could see his back. Mottled, brownish-red marks were blooming beneath his tattoos: incipient bruises from his rough handling by the guards and his subsequent battering against the cell walls. At least the welts that had earlier covered his hands and neck had subsided, visible now only as scabbed-over puncture marks. “Be gentle with me, Watson,” he entreated, and she nearly smiled.

There was little that she could do about the bruising without basic medical supplies -- ice, anti-inflammatories -- but she palpated his skin gently, looking for deeper damage. When she came near his wings, she hesitated.

“You can touch them,” he offered.

But despite his words, he had gone tense at the prospect. She reassured him that touching his wings was unnecessary and instead explored the muscle insertions on his back, attempting to work out with her fingertips how he was achieving the structural strength and motive power to fly. To distract him while she worked, she floated questions and theories at him about where they might be, whether the ‘transportation beam’ they had witnessed in the Brownstone might be only illusory, whether they had any reasonable expectation of rescue by the powers-that-be that had been surveilling Prospect Park. They had very nearly relaxed into the rhythm of their usual deductive give-and-take when there was a sound at the front of the cell.

They both looked up at the noise, Sherlock going instantly rigid under Joan’s hands. One of the antennaed faux-Centurions stood in the newly-created opening. At the sight of him, a fresh wave of nausea hit Joan. Sherlock’s wings began to fan in agitation. Warily, they both stood.

The guard held up another vial, this one full. He fixed his gaze on Sherlock. “You’ve had your last free dose, Earthling. From now on, you’ll need to work for them. Come with me.”

Sherlock shook his head, resolutely taking Joan’s hand. “Both of us or neither of us. We won’t be separated.”

The guard laughed. “You’ll come around soon enough.” Before either of them could protest, he was gone, the barrier sealing itself behind him.

They looked at each other, and Joan saw her own frown of worry reflected back at her on Sherlock’s face. She glanced at the two empty vials on the floor. “You might come to regret that.”

He squeezed her hand. “I won’t,” he swore. “I could never.”


	8. The Bees Accept a Mission

It was impossible to know if Sherlock regretted his decision to stand firm. The delirium, when it hit, was all-encompassing, and his only apparent thought in the world was for killing the giant space bees on the other side of the barrier. Joan did her best to calm him, to reassure him that they were safe (at least for now), to get him to come away from the barrier (or to not batter himself against it!), but nothing she did would distract him from the apparently dire threat of the space bees.

It had been gruelling enough to to watch him before the delirium took him: tense and twitching, clutching her hand tightly as he fought to maintain his ratiocination. But it was excruciating to see him in this newly impulsive, self-destructive state, repeatedly beating himself against their cell walls. She had seen brief eruptions of similar behavior from him before this, of course -- breaking a plate or overturning a piece of furniture in a sudden flash of fear, frustration, or anger -- but never had she seen it sustained, steady-state, all but replacing every other facet of the man she had come to know as well as her own hand.

_That_ man invariably called her _Watson._ This one only called her _Joan._

Sherlock had retained enough of himself to actively strive to not hurt her; that much, at least, had remained present. If she physically placed herself between him and the barrier, he would leave off throwing himself at it until he had deftly but firmly moved her out of the way. But move her out of the way he _would,_ and she could not prevent _that,_ short of attempting to injure him in her own turn: the transformation that had given him the wings seemed to have given him insectoid strength as well.

She finally devised an arrangement that would keep him more-or-less still and calm: if she sat against the side-wall, nearly up against the mouth of the cell, he would wedge himself into the space between her and the translucent barrier, apparently reinforcing the barrier with his own body. There, finally, he would stay, quietly muttering imprecations and death threats against the space bees on the other side.

In truth, the giant bees on the other side of the barrier did seem to have an unnatural interest in Joan, clustering against the barrier nearest to wherever she was, as if they were fixated on her with the same intensity that Sherlock fixed on them. They were far less concerned with Sherlock's presence. But she could not concern herself with the space bees just now: her primary concern was Sherlock’s safety and ultimately getting them out of this mess.

And for _that,_ she needed information.

She held out a hand and called to her the _watsonia_ guard bees. They came sweetly out of the air to her, gloving her hand and forearm. Bees changed jobs within the hive as they aged, and the guard bees were old enough to be well-seasoned and experienced, and yet still in their physical prime. In their day, each one of them had attended the larvae and then queen, then gone on to perform every other task there is to be done inside a hive. They knew precisely the value of what they protected, and had both the steadiness and strength to do it.

“They’re coming to take Sherlock away,” Joan told them, and the bees _buzzed_ their outrage, promising living death to anyone who tried. “No, shh, _listen,”_ she commanded them, and unlike Sherlock, they did. “We can’t stop them from doing it, not when they have that flash-bang device of theirs, and I don’t want you to try. Instead, I want you to go with Sherlock. Be sneaky, be clever. Don’t let them see you. I want to see you all come back here alive again, every last one of you, and Sherlock, too. But in the meanwhile, I want you to go everywhere, learn everything. You’ve seen the way ants explore, yes?”

A _buzz_ of indignation rose up. To think, that she would ask them to learn from _ants!_ Ants couldn’t even _fly!_

Joan couldn’t help but smile. “Precisely, you’re much cleverer than ants. And thus you will do much, _much_ better than they would. Take some of the foragers with you, they know exactly how exploration and information-gathering works. Find out everything, and when you’re done, make sure you all -- including Sherlock! -- come back to me.”

The bees took it upon themselves to organize the details of their mission among themselves: after all, swarm intelligence is far greater than that of any single, paltry mind. Never doubt the _watsonia’s_ faith in their Empress -- the superiority of swarm intelligence is merely a fact, its simple truth independent of however esteemed, loyal, valiant, clever, and loving the said single mind might be. A swarm of Joan Watsons would be a force of nature unlike the world had ever seen, capable of saving or levelling the biosphere in an eyeblink; this they knew to the very depths of their loyal, venomous, _aculeatean_ souls. Nevertheless, despite all Joan's blessings, their beloved Empress was not a swarm, but a single -- albeit exceptional! -- individual, with all the limitations that implied. Her individuality was her single fault. Happily, her loyal _watsonia_ were honoured to be permitted the privilege of making up the difference.

Thus, when the alien pretender’s guard arrived, the bees were ready. The scent of the space bees was intensely provoking -- Joan’s drone, despite his Empress’ attempts to control him, threw himself repeatedly at the synth-wax barrier. Even the highly-disciplined force of the _watsonia_ were tempted to action by the grave insult tendered by the encroaching alien presence. But they had been given a mission by their Empress. They held their formation, waiting for their moment.

The alien guard outside the cell timed their moment precisely, opening the barrier at the same instant the Empress’ drone threw himself at it. The drone fell through, clumsy and uncoordinated, before his Empress could pull him back.

The _watsonia_ contingent that was seconded to the drone -- half the hive guard, and a smaller company of experienced field bees -- poured through the barrier opening with him. Their escape went unnoticed by the alien bee-human-hybrid guard, who were preoccupied with subduing the Empress’ agitated drone. The space bees noticed the contingent of _watsonia,_ but the _watsonia_ foiled the space bees' pursuit by being agile and quick, ducking into myriad crannies too tiny to accommodate the lumbering giants. From their crevices, the _watsonia_ observed carefully, watching for the drone's safety, but were thankfully not called upon to bring vengeance upon the alien human-bee hybrids for harming the Empress’ drone. The alien guard opened a vial and plied the drone with another of their fragrant, honey-based elixirs. Once the drone’s attention was thoroughly caught by the potion’s aroma, the human-bee-hybrids used it to lead him away from the Empress’ cell. 

Carefully, secretly, the _watsonia_ followed. A guard contingent remained with the drone to keep a careful eye on the drone and his safety, but the rest fanned out to all quarters, able and determined to discover all the alien queen’s secrets.


	9. Space Horse?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies, I seem to have spaced (heh) updating over the weekend!

It was hours before Sherlock returned, perhaps even a full day. There was no measure of time but the irregular thump of the space bees against the enclosure wall, near Joan's head. Joan made a thorough inventory of the space, cataloging assets and looking for a way out, but when that proved fruitless, there was nothing left for her to do but brood.

There were many _watsonia_ in the enclosure with her, but they, too, were brooding: they were even less suited to idleness than their Empress. They crawled over the enclosure wall, patrolling against the space bees outside, examined every crevice of their cell, and worried over their brood back home.

_Every hour we're here, no one is foraging for the larvae. They'll starve soon!_

_Starve? They're unprotected! They might become food for hungry wasps first!_

_We must get home! We must get home!_

Joan heard the nervous agitation of her bees, and tried to soothe them. "Ms. Hudson is there. She'll notice your numbers are depleted, and will call in help. Ask Edson and the other beekeepers to skim pollen from their hives for your brood. She knows who to call, what to do -- she helped us after your battle with MI6, remember?" 

Only a few of the queens were old enough to remember the mighty battle with MI6, but the story was legend within the hives. For their Empress' sake, the bees tried to settle, and not worry her overmuch.

But it was still impossible to entirely set aside the peril that faced their abandoned brood.

When the thump of the low, throbbing _burrrr_ of the space-bees changed outside their cell, Joan was more than ready for a distraction. Human-shaped shadows moved outside, and Joan moved quickly to the enclosure mouth.

"Stand back!" a guard instructed -- Joan did, lest she and her bees be tazed a second time -- and then Sherlock was pushed through the opening.

"Sherlock!" she cried, rushing to catch him as he stumbled. His wings caught his weight before she got there.

"I'm fine, Watson, I'm fine." He did seem himself: entirely lucid, and in good enough condition to recover his balance and stand. "They just like to throw their weight around. Are you--?" He was inspecting her in his own turn. He abruptly sighed in relief.

"I'm fine. They left me entirely alone, nothing worse that boredom and worry. You?"

He scowled. "They're training me to be a soldier. An assassin. A saboteur. I would have refused to do it, but…"

"But they had me," Joan finished, and Sherlock nodded.

A small opening in the front cell wall appeared again, and two vials went rolling across the floor into their cell. "Your day's wages!" the guard called, before the opening sealed itself again.

"I'm not doing your dirty work for _pay!"_ Sherlock shouted back, but Joan laid a hand on his forearm.

"Don't," she cautioned, low. "We need those."

Sherlock snarled and yanked his arm away. "I didn't drink endless gallons of bad twelve-step coffee just to get hooked on space-horse."

Joan waited a moment for him to calm himself again. "We don't know that it's a chemical dependency," she said quietly. "We know nothing of your new physiology, or if it's changed your biochemical needs, too."

"I don't like it," Sherlock spat. "I don't like the feeling that my lucidity _depends on…"_

She waited, but he didn't finish the sentence. "Your lucidity depends on oxygen, too," she said. "And food, and water, and sleep. Deprive you of any of those things for too long, and you will lose your rationality. I'm not saying this stuff is exactly like those, we don't even know what this stuff _is_ \--"

"Some kind of honey concentrate," he supplied. "Which itself pushes the boundaries of chemistry, as honey is already a super-saturated solution. It shouldn't _be_ possible to concentrate it further."

"Whatever it is, it's a problem to solve after we've gotten out of here. We can figure out the formula and its effect on your body when we're safe back at the brownstone. Now isn't the time to attempt detoxing yourself from space-heroin, assuming it even _is_ space-heroin."

Sherlock blew out a long breath. "Any ideas on how to get back to the brownstone?"

Joan smiled. "Not yet. But I have spies." She lifted a hand to the air. " _Watsonia,_ report!"


	10. What the Watsonia Saw

The guard bees that had gone out into the larger hive with the Empress's drone crowded close, gloving her hand, whispering to her their knowledge of the outer world. They twisted and wiggled and danced, telling her of all they saw. 

"Make us a map," she instructed, after she and her drone had watched for a while. "Show us where everything is." 

The _watsonia_ rose into the air, and assembled themselves into a three-dimensional map of the outer rooms. The Empress laughed, as the bees made themselves into a wire-form replica of the outer space. "It reminds me of when I used to Dungeon Master," she said to her drone. 

That meant nothing to _watsonia,_ but they were pleased that she was pleased. 

"Here," the drone said, pointing to a farther chamber. "Here is where they had me training. Aeronautics and acrobatics _here,_ and weapons practice _here._ They brought me back along this passage here, and _here_ is where…" He paused, frowning. "Here is where I knew where I was again. Not that I remembered the way from my journey out -- I came to in the aerodrome -- but I could smell where you were." 

"Smell?" the Empress asked. 

_Of course, smell!_ the _watsonia_ replied. _We can always smell where you are, and where home is!_

"I could tell which passage went to you," the drone continued, "because it smelled like home. Not like the brownstone, exactly. Like you." 

"From all the way out there? I know I missed my shower today, but…" 

"The space-bee venom must have altered my senses, too, in addition to the wings." 

"Hm," the Empress said. "Were you able to get near a window? Any idea where we actually are?" 

The drone groaned. "That's the bad news. We actually are on Deimos. Or some place very much like it." 

"But the gravity--" the Empress protested. 

"It's an artificial field," the drone answered. "This entire place is a training complex for staging their attack on Earth. I heard the guards complaining about it -- it must be quite exhausting, to go from Deimos' gravity to Earth's. It's one of the reasons they're trying to recruit humans for their attack -- we're already used to Earth's gravity." 

"So we're stronger than they are. If we can overpower them…" 

"There's still the space bees. And their weapons. Plus also the question of how to actually get off Deimos again. If we could only find their transportation ray…" 

_We know!_ a few of the guard bees buzzed. _It's in the throne room! That's how the poison queen and her drone were sent back to Earth!_ And with some coordinated jostling, buzzing, and waggling, the bees with the answer to the Empress's question enjoined their compatriots to expand the wire frame of the throne room. Bees from other areas of the map left their positions to make up the details of the room, including an array of controls off to the side. 

The Empress' drone nodded. "Yes, I remember seeing that, before all hell broke loose. Your bees are sure?" 

A swell of buzzing outrage filled the room, and the Empress's drone drew back before it. "Fine, yes, fine! You're sure!" he called out, his hands lifted up. 

"Can you show us the controls themselves?" the Empress asked, and the bees rearranged themselves yet again. Only a few bees had examined them closely, and so they were less sure this time, but the cognitive powers that allowed them to find particular trees -- and thus their hive -- in a woods full of them served them in good stead. 

"Hm…" the Empress said. "It's impossible to know if we can actually _work_ that, not until we try. The next time Sherlock goes out, I want you to go with him again, and this time I want you to concentrate on finding out how that device works. If anyone comes or goes, I want you paying attention to _exactly_ how it's done. Do you understand? Can you do that for me?" 

The buzzing that filled the small space was a thrilling chord of pride and competence, the bees tuning their harmonics carefully to resonate with the space and each other. _Of course we can! We can do anything for you!_

The Empress smiled, radiant and lovely. "Of course you can. You are truly exceptional bees." She turned to her drone. "Well, it looks like we have the seeds of a plan. Gather more intelligence, overpower the guards, and make our escape via the throne room. Happily, they're giving you training in their own weapons -- you concentrate on how we defeat their arms. Which leaves only the space bees." 

_We can take those space bees!_ the _watsonia_ buzzed. 

"I don't fault your courage, but I saw how many of you died while taking on those bees at the brownstone. We needed Moran and Moriarty's help against them then, and you had your full strength of all the hives behind you. No, we need a better plan for the space bees. We'll work on it. And in the meanwhile, we let them think they've won. Right, Sherlock?" 

"Which means taking my medicine and acting the happy slave," the drone said unhappily, but nodded. 

_But the brood!_ the bees protested. _The brood needs us._

The Empress's smile dimmed. "Yes, the brood needs us. We'll make it as quick as we can. And in the meanwhile, we trust to Ms. Hudson to care for the brood." 

The drone touched the back of the Empress's hand. "If anyone can be trusted to care for the _watsonia_ brood, it's Ms. Hudson." 

The Empress nodded bravely, but the _watsonia_ could still scent her worry.


	11. Dream Team

Sherlock played the good prisoner, sullen and obedient, all the next day, while the _watsonia_ penetrated to every corner and passage of the training complex, gathering intelligence. 

Joan, meanwhile, did her damnedest not to go mad with uselessness. At least the gargantuan space bees outside her chamber had settled down somewhat. They no longer threw themselves at the impenetrable space-wax partition that separated them from her, driving her slowly insane with the irregular, startlingly-loud thumping. Instead they clustered on the translucent material at whatever point was nearest her as she moved about the cell.

From time-to-time, Joan found herself stroking the waxy barrier where they clustered. The space bees on the other side responded with a dull, restless _burrrrrrr,_ like so many idling chainsaw engines. They were ready for something, Joan could tell, but ready for what, she didn't know.

She happened to be standing there when there was a change in the activity outside -- shadows moving beyond the barrier of space-wax. Joan stood back, and the usual gap in the barrier opened, making a temporary door.

Sherlock hovered in the gap for the barest moment, before spinning in midair and darting straight back out the door again, as fast and agile as a hummingbird. _"Now, Watson!"_ he shouted as he went, and she heard the thud of flesh on flesh.

Joan was more than ready for an end to the waiting. "To me!" she called to her bees, as she darted forward. "To me, to me!" 

The _watsonia_ in the cell rose as a body and followed her through the door. They were met just outside by the _watsonia_ who had been with Sherlock, the two bodies of bees blending together. And not only the _watsonia_ who had been with Sherlock, but--

Joan blinked, and blinked again: the space bees that had been clinging to the outside of her enclosure had joined the guard phalanx around her, their immense, dog-sized bodies punctuating the finer fog of _watsonia_ around her. The low _burring_ drone of the space-bees harmonized beautifully with the high trilling _buzz_ of her own bees. Both species waited together for direction.

"Defend Sherlock!" she instructed them -- for Sherlock was fighting hand-to-wing against five guards -- and to her wonder, the space bees obeyed her command with the same alacrity that the _watsonia_ did. It was only a matter of minutes before the two kinds of bees had collectively subdued the small contingent of alien guards.

"What--? How--?" Joan asked, as Sherlock came to her, panting.

"Segregation of the queen," he gasped. "Queen Bea was a naive fool to think that imprisoning you would neutralize you. Especially after leaving the complex herself. Any queenless hive will accept an alien queen as its own once her scent has had a chance to spread through the hive. Which yours has done -- I could smell your presence as far as the aerodrome today. But word is that Queen Bea returning to evaluate my performance tomorrow, so it had to be-- _Duck!"_

Joan dropped and pivoted toward the threat, her arms up, ready to fight. Another contingent of guard had come into the room; the rays from their guns went harmlessly over her head. Beside her, Sherlock flung out an arm at the guards, something metal and shiny in his hand. A spray of liquid launched itself from his hand, the thick liquid _goop_ hardening on contact with the guards. They stood frozen, like so many stalagmites.

"Liquid beeswax," Sherlock said, rifling the utility belts of the first set of guards. He tossed her a cannister, and then a second one identical to the first. He grabbed a few more items for himself, these of a different design than the liquid beeswax. "Ready?"

Joan nodded. More space bees were coming to join them, falling into formation around her. "Let's get out of here. To the throne room!"

The journey to the throne room was a long pitched battle, as the two humans and their bees fought their way chamber by chamber, passage by passage. Sherlock used the alien weaponry freely, deploying liquid beeswax and honey vapor bombs to take guards down in small groups, then rifling their bodies for more ammunition. Joan's bees, both Terran and Martian, fought a large number of guards themselves, leaving Joan to clean up the occasional stray who broke through the swarm. 

"Flashbang!" Sherlock shouted, dragging Joan by the shoulder of her shirt into a small alcove. "Find cover!" The _watsonia_ dove for any small crevice and cranny they could find, while the larger space bees crowded into Sherlock and Joan's alcove, blanketing the humans with their large, warm, monstrous bodies. The flashbang, when it went off, still made Joan reel with the shock of it, but she was largely insulated from it by the barrier of space-bees. The outer layer of space-bees fell in the blast, but the remaining contingent zoomed toward the alien guardsmen who had set off the device. They were followed close behind by the _watsonia._ The guard went down screaming.

Then at last the throne room was theirs, the last remaining guardsmen imprisoned in stalagmites of hardened beeswax. Sherlock threw himself at the door controls, closing against the possibility of more guards, while Joan ran to the controls for the transportation beam. The controls made more sense in person than they had when sketched in low-resolution wire-frame by the bodies of bees, but the _watsonia_ who had been in charge of investigating the controls still helpfully highlighted a large button with their bodies for her. "Is this it?" she asked, and they hummed their agreement.

Above the activation button was a lit screen showing several different locations, among them the front room of the brownstone. Joan tapped that picture, and it glowed and expanded, filling the entire display. The mechanism began to hum under her hand. But before she could press the activation button the bees set themselves against her, gently but inexorably pushing her away from the console.

"Sherlock! They won't let me activate the teleportation beam!" she said, as the bees chivvied her to a circular mark on the floor. Sherlock was already there, having been driven there -- but far less politely -- by another body of _watsonia._

"I don't think you can press the button and make it here in time," he called over the rising buzz of the _watsonia._ The swarm pressed close to the two of them, driving them together. Joan could hear the lower _burrrr_ of Martian bees in the mix.

"Then who's going to…?" she asked, just as the room started to shimmer and fade around them. "Oh, no! My _watsonia!"_

For she saw too late what those noble, loyal bees had done: a small contingent of _watsonia_ had chosen to sacrifice themselves for the good of the greater whole. They pressed the button that enabled the escape of the rest, at the cost of remaining themselves trapped on that Martian moon.

The room shimmered and faded, going blurry and indistinct, then reforming itself into the front room of the brownstone. Joan staggered as gravity subtly shifted under her feet. Then the world steadied, and the cloud of _watsonia_ and space bees dispersed, giving her space to breathe.

"Joan! Sherlock!" Ms. Hudson exclaimed, and Joan found herself enveloped in a warm hug.

"Well," Moriarty drawled from Sherlock's chair in the library. "I see you're finally back, Sherlock. I was starting to think I had misplaced my faith in you."

"Wotcher, Sherlock," Moran greeted them from the couch. "Thought we'd have to mount a rescue mission for you ourselves."

"Activate the teleportation shield on this location," Agent McNally said into his wristwatch. It was really quite crowded there in the Brownstone library. Another man, bee-winged and bee-goggled and a stranger to Joan and Sherlock, stood beside McNally.

"Roger that," McNally's wristwatch replied, high and tinny. Nothing in the room seemed to change, but McNally gave a satisfied nod.

"What are you all doing in my house?" Sherlock challenged. The _watsonia_ buzzed threateningly.

"Waiting for you to escape so we could plan, of course," Moriarty said. "You honestly didn't think I was going to divide the spoils with that megalomaniac, did you? I may be interested in world domination, but I don't intend to share with her."

"And I'm here to debrief you," McNally said. "We at the F-Bee-I have been monitoring Queen Bea and her attempts to enslave the Earth for years. I would have warned you off that meteorite she sent, but I'm afraid you got to it first."

"Bee-ing envenomed isn't all bad," the stranger said, and offered his hand to Sherlock. He levitated gently as he spoke, his wings thrumming. "Just make sure you have a steady supply of honey concentrate at hand, and you'll be fine."

"May I introduce Agent Barry E. Eames," McNally said. "Initially another victim of Queen Bea's many plans to enslave the Earth, but now a trusted agent of the F-Bee-I."

"Wait, so this isn't the first time that Martian bee-queen has tried to take over the planet?" Joan asked.

"Far from it," Eames answered. "But if we all work together, we may be able to keep Queen Bea at bay for good."

"Wait, working together? With _her?"_ Sherlock asked incredulously, gesturing at Moriarty.

Jamie Moriarty raised a supercilious brow. "As our dear Watson so eloquently pointed out, Earth is my home, too. And you may be surprised, but I make a _delightful_ double-agent."

"Triple- or quadruple agent, more like," Joan said. 

"You wound me," Moriarty said, a hand on her breast.

But Joan wasn't listening to Moriarty's theatrics. Instead, she looked to Sherlock, asking him a silent question. After a moment, he nodded.

Joan held out a hand, and the _watsonia_ queens flocked to her, landing lightly on her palm. They, too, would follow where she led. 

Not wanting to be forgotten, a giant space-bee bumped gently against Joan's knee, pledging her own loyalty and that of her space sisters, as well. 

"All right, then," Joan said. "The Earth needs to be saved. Let's get to work."

**Author's Note:**

> Queen Bea's earlier attempts to enslave the Earth -- and BEE-Man's efforts in foiling them! -- are documented in Double-Dare Comics. It only ran two issues; you can read them [here](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzDpBucfL91beW4xM0NaQUVsYjQ). Many thanks to damnmydooah for [suggesting the crossover](http://sanguinarysanguinity.tumblr.com/post/131921561383/damnmydooah-vegetablerightsandpeace-avvoltoio)!


End file.
